Seneca phonology
Seneca words are written with 13 letters, three of which can be umlauted, plus the letter colon (꞉) and the acute accent mark. Seneca language is generally written in all-lowercase, and capital letters are only used rarely, even then only for the first letter of a word; all-caps is never used, even on road signs. The vowels and consonants are a, ä, e, ë, i, o, ö, h, j, k, n, s, t, w, y, and ʼ''.Chafe, 1963, p.4Preston, 1949, p.23 In some transliterations, ''t is replaced by d'', and likewise ''k by g''; Seneca does not have a phonemic differentiation between voiced and voiceless consonants (see below in Phonology 2.1: Consonants). The letter ''j can also be replaced by the three-letter combination tsy. (For example, a creek in the town of Coldspring, New York, and the community near it, bears a name that can be transliterated as either jonegano꞉h or tsyo꞉nekano꞉h.) Consonants As per Wallace Chafe's 2015 grammar of Seneca, the consonantal and non-vocalic inventory of Seneca is as follows. Note that orthographic representations of these sounds are given in angled brackets where different than the IPA transcription. Resonants /j/ is a palatal semivowel. After s it is voiceless and spirantized ç. After h it is voiceless , in free variation with a spirant allophone ç. After t or k it is voiced and optionally spirantized j, in free variation with a spirant allophone . Otherwise it is voiced and not spirantized j. /w/ is a velar semivowel. It is weakly rounded w. /n/ is a released apico-alveolar nasal n̺.Chafe, 1967, p. 5, 8, 15-18 Oral obstruents /t/ is an apico-alveolar stop t̺. It is voiceless and aspirated t̺ʰ before an obstruent or an open juncture (but is hardly audible between a nasalized vowel and open juncture). It is voiced and released d̺ before a vowel and resonant. /k/ is a dorso-velar stop k. It is voiceless and aspirated kʰ before an obstruent or open juncture. It is voiced and released g before a vowel or resonant. /s/ is a spirant with blade-alveolar groove articulation s. It is always voiceless, and is fortified to s˰ everywhere except between vowels. It is palatalized to ʃ before j, and lenited to s˯ intervocalically. /dʒ/ is a voiced postalveolar affricate dʒ, and /dz/ a voiced alveolar affricate dz. Before i it is optionally palatalized dz in free variation with dź.Chafe, 1967, p. 6 Nevertheless, among younger speakers, it appears as though /dʒ/ and /dz/ are in the process of merging to dʒ. Similarly, /tʃ/ is a voiceless postalveolar affricate tʃ, and /ts/ a voiceless alveolar affricate ts. Laryngeal obstruents /h/ is a voiceless segment h colored by an immediately preceding and/or following vowel and/or resonant. /ʔ/ is a glottal stop ʔ. Vowels The vowels can be subclassified into the oral vowels /i/, /e/, /æ/, /a/, and /o/, and the nasalized vowels /ɛ/ and /ɔ/. Of these vowels, /æ/ is relatively rare, an innovation not shared with other Five Nations Iroquoian languages; even rarer is /u/, a vowel only used to describe unusually small objects. Note that orthographic representations of these sounds are given in angled brackets where different than the IPA transcription. The orthography described here is the one used by the Seneca Bilingual Education Project. The nasal vowels, and , are transcribed with tremas on top: . Depending on the phonetic environment, the nasal vowel may vary between and , whereas may vary from to . Long vowels are indicated with a following , while stress is indicated with an acute accent over the top. is transcribed as ä. Oral vowels /i/ is a high front vowel i. /e/ is a high-mid front vowel. Its high allophone ɪ occurs in postconsonantal position before i or an oral obstruent. Its low allophone e occurs in all other environments. /æ/ is a low front vowel æ. /a/ is a low central vowel. Its high allophone ʌ occurs in postconsonantal position before i, w, j, or an oral obstruent. Its low allophone ɑ occurs in all other environments. Before ɛ or ɔ it is nasalized æ. /o/ is a mid back vowel. It is weakly rounded. Its high allophone ʊ occurs in postconsonantal position before i or an oral obstruent. Its low allophone o occurs in all other environments. /u/ is a rounded high back vowel u. It has also, however, been recorded as ɯ. Nasal vowels /ɛ/ is a low-mid front vowel. It is oraled , and is nasalized . /ɔ/ is a low back vowel. It is weakly rounded and oraled , and is weakly rounded and nasaled . Diphthongs The following oral diphthongs occur in Seneca: ae, ai, ao, ea, ei, eo, oa, oe, and oi. The following nasal diphthongs occur as well: aö, eö, and oë.Holmer, 1952, p. 217 Prosody Vowel length is marked with a colon , and open juncture by word space.Chafe, 1960, p. 12 Long vowels generally occur in one of two environments: 1. In even-numbered (i.e. falling and even number of syllables from the beginning of the word) word-penultimate syllables not followed by a laryngeal stop; and 2. In odd-numbered penultimate syllables that A. are followed by only one non-vocalic segment before the succeeding vowel, B. are not followed by a laryngeal stop, and C. do not contain the vowel a (unless the syllable is word-initial). Moreover, vowels are often lengthened compensitorally as the reflex of a short vowel and an (elided) glottal segment (e.g. vowels are long preceding glottal fricatives elided before sonorants (*V̆hR > V̄R)). Stress is either strong, marked with an acute accent mark (e.g. ⟨é⟩), or weak, which is unmarked (e.g. ⟨e⟩). Seneca accented short vowels are typically higher in pitch than their unaccented counterparts, while accented long vowels have been recorded as having a falling pitch. Short vowels are typically accented in a trochaic pattern, when they appear in even-numbered syllables preceding A. a laryngeal obstruent, B. a cluster of non-vocalic segments, or C. an odd-numbered syllable containing either A or B. There does not appear to be any upper or lower limit on how many such syllables can be accented – every even-numbered syllable in a word can be accented, but none need be accented. Syllables can also be stressed by means of accent spreading, if an unaccented vowel is followed immediately by a stressed vowel (i.e. VV́ > V́V́). Additionally, word-initial and word-final syllables are underlyingly unaccented, although they can be given sentence level stress. Syllable structure Seneca allows both open and closed syllables; a Seneca syllable is considered to be closed when the nucleus is followed by a cluster of multiple consonants. Moreover, h appears to be ambisyllabic intervocalically, and can be included in a cluster of multiple non-consonantal segments in the onset. References External links * Category:Language phonologies